The Green City for a Sustainable Future: the Dutch Garden at Euroflora in Genoa
The 12th edition of Euroflora, the international exhibition of flowers and ornamental plants, will take place from 23 April to 8 May 2022 in Genoa, in the breath-taking setting of the Parchi di Nervi. The Embassy of the Netherlands in Italy will be there, with a unique garden designed by the Dutch Niek Roozen Landscape, one of the most famous landscape architecture studios in the world. The theme we chose, in continuity with the Dutch Floriade Expo 2022 currently taking place in Almere, is the Green City for a sustainable future.
The Narrative Behind Our Green City
With our garden we would like to tell a story. A story where humans, bees, butterflies, insects, amphibians, plants, flowers and water all live in harmony and contribute to a healthy urban environment with a fair climate and biodiversity. This idea inspired the design of the Dutch Garden at Euroflora, a living bouquet of colourful flowers, arranged in circles -each with a specific colour range and mix of flowers- around a pond where water plants, ornamental grasses, perennials and bulbs surround the water. Let us walk you through our story.
Green is Good for all Living Creatures
More planting and flowers in cities are paramount to improve the living conditions of all beings. Various studies show that a view of green reduces stress and enhances positive emotions: people become more keen to go for a walk, do sports outside and interact socially, all of which contribute to a healthier and happier life.
Green is Good for the Environment
Well-designed urban green spaces contribute to biodiversity, which in turn is essential for a healthy environment: the diversity of plants and flowers ensures the needed nutrition for insects and bees. In particular, perennials and early flowering bulbs are vital in this process: while the perennials are still in the ground, bees use the nectar from the bulb flowers. Now more than ever, with a dramatic decrease of insects by about 75% in the past decades, we must create a habitat where bees can pollinate and secure our food production and restore the balance of the ecosystem as a whole. Specific water plants also contribute to increase biodiversity: by cleaning the water, they create the right habitat for amphibians.
Green is Good for Cities
Over the past years, we have witnessed extreme weather conditions in urban environments with increasing frequency. The higher recurrence of drier periods alternating with wetter periods is impacting on the land and on urban life. We have to take measures to keep and store water and to allow it to infiltrate in a natural way and not to get discarded all at once. Plants can come to our rescue: using the proper planting to reduce evaporation and designing rain gardens to help infiltrate water are effective ways to achieve these goals. An added benefit of planting is the reduction of the heat island effect during warm days, creating a more comfortable urban micro climate.
The Living Bouquet
All these themes come back in the Dutch Garden, the Living Bouquet that we offer to our Italian and international friends to tell the story of the Green City in the beautiful way we imagined. Most of all, we hope that our garden inspires people to plant more green and flowers on their balcony, in their garden and in their neighbourhood to help to improve city life!
